Overnight Regulation: Yellen pushes back on GOP banking deregulation plan | Court lets EPA put pollution rule on hold | Trump, Macron fail to break climate deadlock | Labor board set for power shift
Welcome to Overnight Regulation, your daily rundown of news from the federal agencies, Capitol Hill, the courts and beyond. Thursdays happen to be big healthcare days. So I’m here, as a healthcare reporter, to also bring you the big news: The Senate released revisions of its bill to repeal and replace ObamaCare. Already, two senators oppose a motion to let them debate the bill. What a day.
THE BIG STORY
Janet Yellen is pushing back on Republican efforts to ease certain post-recession regulations on bank.
These regulations are intended to keep banks stable through financial crises.
Federal Reserve Board Chair Yellen told the Senate Banking Committee that “we can never be confident that there won’t be another” panic on Thursday morning, just weeks after she predicted there wouldn’t be another financial crisis in our lifetimes.
{mosads}She also asked lawmakers to maintain requirements targeted by Republicans for how much cash major banks must hold.
Backdrop to her testimony: Republicans are attempting to roll back the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform Act. The House in June passed a sweeping bill to strip away much of the 2010 law, and the Treasury Department soon after released an expansive report detailing major parts it would like to scrap.
The upper chamber is unlikely to take up the House bill, and Senate Banking Committee leaders said they’re focused on bipartisan measures to reduce regulations on community banks, which are seen as less risky and have fewer federal violations, and to fix federal housing finance.
Read Sylvan Lane’s piece here.
REGS ROUNDUP
Energy: A federal appeals court is letting the Trump administration put on hold an Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) methane pollution rule for oil and natural gas drilling.
The Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit ordered Thursday that its decision last week rejecting the EPA’s delay of the regulation could itself be delayed for 14 days while the Trump administration considers whether to appeal the ruling.
The court wrote in a brief order that putting the rule on hold “for longer would hand the agency, in all practical effect, the very delay in implementation this panel determined to be” illegal.
Read the rest from Timothy Cama here.
More Energy: Getting the greenlight… The Trump administration approved an oil company’s new plan to drill for oil and natural gas in the Arctic Ocean north of Alaska.
The Interior Department’s Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM) announced the approval of Italian oil giant Eni SpA’s plan to drill exploratory wells from an existing artificial island in the Beaufort Sea about 15 miles northwest of Prudhoe Bay, as long as the company gets other federal and state approvals.
Eni is likely to start drilling in December and will only drill during the winter months to avoid some harm to wildlife.
Context… It’s the first approval for Arctic Ocean drilling under the Trump administration. Former President Barack Obama had put stringent requirements on companies hoping to drill in the Arctic and had prohibited any new leases for drilling rights there through 2022. But Eni already had its lease for the area at issue.
Tim’s got you covered again here.
Technology: The Federal Communications Commission receives more complaints about robocalls than any other topic, Chairman Ajit Pai told reporters Thursday.
And so, the FCC stepped up its efforts to crack down on robocalls Thursday, opening up an inquiry into how to combat illegal and fraudulent callers.
The FCC voted to explore the issue of caller ID spoofing which allows robocall operators to mask their identity and even make their numbers appear benign.
Environment: Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke is formally asking President Trump to keep two national monument designations without any changes.
While Zinke’s recommendation doesn’t necessarily mean Trump won’t try to change the protections, the conclusions for Idaho’s Craters of the Moon and Washington’s Hanford Reach mean they are likely safe.
The Thursday announcement came amid a wide-ranging review by Zinke of more than two-dozen national monuments designated over the last two decades. Trump may try to eliminate some of the monuments, though conservationists say he does not have the authority to do that.
Environment: No breakthrough here… A Thursday meeting between President Trump and French President Emmanuel Macron did not yield anything new on the Paris climate deal, the leaders said Thursday.
“Something could happen with respect to the Paris accord. We’ll see what happens,” Trump said during a joint news conference with Macron in Paris on Thursday. Trump announced last month he would pull the U.S. out of the international climate change agreement.
Macron has been one of the most vocal supporters of the Paris deal and a loud critic of Trump’s decision to pull out of the deal.
Labor: The balance of power on the nation’s labor law enforcement board is set to shift under President Trump.
Conservatives say the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) — responsible for enforcing workers’ collective bargaining rights and fair labor practices — has spent the past eight years under former President Barack Obama catering to unions.
Trump now has the opportunity to shift the balance of power with a new Republican majority on the board that could overturn some of the most controversial rulings lambasted by businesses.
Read Lydia Wheeler’s story here.
More Labor: Lydia also attended a hearing for the new NRLB nominee… Sen. Patty Murray (D-Wash.) asked nominee Marvin Kaplan, currently the chief counsel of the Occupational Safety and Health Review Commission, how he would handle cases that involve the very person who appointed him to the panel, President Trump.
Kaplan responded that he would consult his ethics officer to “ensure there’s no ethical issue in us participating in the case or me adjudicating the case.”
ICYMI FROM THE HILL
Trump administration considering new sanctions on China over North Korea (The Hill)
DOJ charges more than 400 individuals with healthcare fraud (The Hill)
Poll: GOP voters support net neutrality rules, oppose AT&T merger (The Hill)
IN THE NEWS
Republicans warn tech over support for net neutrality (Axios)
Massive coal mine tests Trump’s push to slash regulation (Reuters)
Discovery chief optimistic about Trump’s regulatory goals (New York Post)
Berkshire aims for fast regulatory action on Oncor deal (The Wall Street Journal)
Send tips, story ideas and coffee (lots of coffee) to rroubein@digital-stage.thehill.com and follow me on Twitter at rachel_roubein.
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